Status update:
I've been busy dealing with this problem, so I apologize for not
posting back earlier. A down edit suite creates quite the headache
when it is normally booked most of the week. Ugh.
Anyway, here's the skinny...
First of all, a Media Dock chassis was shipped to us yesterday EOD
and arrived early this morning. It took three people (Bob C.,
support; Dave W., inside sales; and ultimately Jeff H., support
supervisor) to get the job done. Avid ended up doing the right thing
by sending the part to us under warranty, but it took far too much
effort on behalf of myself and my boss to get it done, which was
extremely frustrating. The part almost didn't ship yesterday, even
though we had been calling back and forth all day. And yes, the most
infuriating part of the whole thing was being told a part was on the
way only to find out the next day that nothing shipped. But enough of
that - the story continues.
When I received the part this morning, I promptly swapped the drives
into the new chassis and fired it up and all looked well for about 5
minutes. After that, Windows hung and I started having the same
problem I originally did (none of the drives showing up in the BIOS).
So, I spent a good portion of today talking on the phone with Bob C.
doing some additional troubleshooting. After tearing things down and
undoing and redoing many-a-cable, we now believe we have it narrowed
down to the Adaptec SCSI card the Media Dock is attached to.
Of course, that part only carried a one year warranty, so we had to
order another one through sales. We weren't upset with the part of
having to pay for a new card - nothing lasts forever - and there was
no disputing the warranty on that part (as we did with the chassis,
which was about a month outside of the 3 year warranty). The problem
I had today was that it took over 45 min. from the time I hung up the
phone with support until sales called me back with a quote for the
part. After I told sales we wanted to go ahead with the order, I was
told there was no guarantee it would ship out today. UNBELIEVABLE!
After expressing my strong discontent with that (it wasn't MY fault
it took almost until the EOD to get the quote) I was told they would
try their best to ship tonight for a delivery tomorrow morning. I
don't think I have to explain to the folks on this list how upset I
will be if the card doesn't arrive tomorrow morning - hopefully it
won't come to that.
Anyway, my whole point is that ultimately, support came through,
while anything dealing with sales was lacking. Customers shouldn't
have to try this hard to get good support for a product, especially
when you are a user/buyer of a company's top-end product and pay
their hefty assurance fees. Causing grief to existing customers is a
sure-fire way to turn otherwise loyal customers into antagonists,
which only serves to hurt the DS platform. Lately, I don't think the
DS platform needs any more enemies, especially its own user base.
So, tomorrow morning, when the card arrives (and it better arrive),
I'll find out if all the stress and bickering with Avid was worth it.
All I need/want is to have an operational edit suite and be able to
move on and get our clients the service they need and expect from us,
which involves meeting deadlines.
I would like to thank everyone - Avid employee or otherwise - who
took the time to respond to my email and offer assistance. I'm
hopeful that tomorrow I'll be back to editing and life will return to
normal.
